Every year, Australia’s state and territory governments issue licences that allow private landholders to kill more than one million native animals—animals that are supposed to be protected by law.
Wombats and rainbow lorikeets are shot. Dingoes are trapped and killed. Pademelons and possums are poisoned. This killing not only inflicts immense suffering on individual animals and orphans their young, but also harms our fragile ecosystems.
The primary justification for the killing of native wildlife is to reduce human–wildlife conflict. Conflicts can arise due to competition with farm animals over grasslands or water, damage to property such as fences, or predation on farm animals. Sometimes it is simply because native animals are seen as pests or nuisances.
Our new report, Licence to Kill: The shocking scale of licensed wildlife killing in Australia, reveals the true extent of this crisis for the first time. In 2023 alone, more than 1.2 million native animals were allowed to be killed under government-issued licences. The most affected species include birds like corellas, lorikeets, and black ducks, as well as kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and possums. Over the last three years, more than 4.5 million of these animals have been targeted for destruction. These figures do not even include the unlimited number of Bennett’s wallabies, Tasmanian pademelons, and brushtail possums that are allowed to be killed in Tasmania every year—which add hundreds of thousands more animals to the national toll.
Worse yet, because of exemptions and a lack of transparency, the total number of native animals killed by private landholders across Australia is unknown—and likely much higher. In many instances, native animals can be killed without a licence which means there is no record of the killing!
If our governments continue to allow killing on this scale, iconic species like kangaroos and cockatoos could disappear from our landscapes.
We need urgent change. Our report calls for an end to the killing of native wildlife, and the strengthening of current laws to make it harder to obtain licences, and to force a shift towards humane and innovative solutions that allow us to live alongside our precious native animals.
We are not unsympathetic to the challenges landholders face. Non-lethal solutions are available and they are more effective at solving conflicts than killing ever is. Coexistence, not killing, must be the future.
Join us in urging state and territory Environment and Agricultural Ministers to stop allowing the killing of native wildlife.